Tour for Humanity was at a high school in Burlington today.  We had visited this same school for a day during the fall semester but the teachers wanted to ensure all of the Grade 10 

students had the chance to experience the program – it was a warm welcome back!  Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center (FSWC) Educator Elena taught 4 workshops: 3 Canadian Experience for the Grade 10 students and 1 presentation on the Global Experience for a Grade 11 English class.  In the Canadian Experience program, students learn about a variety of difficult topics in Canadian history including slavery, the Indian Residential Schools System, the voyage of the SS St. Louis and the systemic internment of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War. Following a review of the past, current issues including cyber bullying and modern-day examples of intolerance are examined and discussed.  The Global Experience program begins with a screening of a three-part documentary series produced by FSWC entitled The Holocaust, Universal Genocide and Real World Heroes. The Ten Stages of Genocide are then discussed in relation to the Holocaust and other world genocides, including Rwanda, Cambodia and crimes against humanity committed in Ukraine and throughout Eastern Europe under Joseph Stalin’s reign.  

Overall the day was a huge success and Elena felt like the students were very interested in learning more about the Holocaust as well as events that speak to intolerance in Canadian History. A lot of students knew about residential schools for instance, but were shocked to learn that the last one closed in 1996. One student made a connection between the recent history of the schools and what she had heard about Native communities struggling with high suicide rates for example.  

Another interesting conversation from the day originated with one young man asking for more information about the tattoos people were given when entering concentration camps. Elena explained that people from Auschwitz were given tattoos but not all camps used tattoos to track prisoners. The same student wanted to know if survivors who had tattoos ever had them removed. Elena said she didn't have statistics on this answer but that it wasn't very easy to get tattoos removed until pretty recently and that most survivors are very elderly and have lived with the tattoo for 75 years or more. Elena did tell them about the fact that tattoos are seen as a desecration of the human body in Judaism and that this tradition gained new meaning in the wake of the Holocaust.